tiistai 1. toukokuuta 2012

A Merry May Day to All!

Sugar coated douhnuts.

Today is the May Day celebration in Finland, which mostly mean dressing in fun costumes, eating sugar coated doughnuts and getting loud and drunk. Officially the day is known here as the Finnish Worker's Day. Traditionally it means the start of the cottage season, go for a stroll and admire the spring and visit your relatives. Nowadays most of the places are crowded with freshmen having fun together and getting drunk. Freshmen wear their school overalls and all whom have taken the baccalaureate wear a white cap.

May Day, in finnish Vappu, has been celebrated from the Middle Ages and is one of the old celebrational days of Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Germany and Latvia. The name "Vappu" originates from an Bavarian abbess/mother superior Valburg who lived in the 700s. May 1. was the day she was named as a Saint.

Mead and funnel cake. Image from Wikipedia.

In Finland May Day was celebrated by lighting bonfires on the fields, called Helavalkea and letting the cattle onto the fields for the first time after the winter. They had a habit of driving the cattle through these fires to prevent illness's. It was a tradition to drink mead and dance.

Nowadays the bonfires are no more lit on May Day, they have moved to be part of the finnish Midsummer Day (Juhannus) celebration.

Up to the end of the 1700s the May Day was a memorial day of saints. During the 1800's the Labour Movement is several countries chose it as their celebration day and as such it is still celebrated. May Day is a National Holiday.

For this I will translate the Milk Chocolate Doughnut cake recipe from Kinuskikissa blog. Merry May Day to all!

Tips:
- You should do the icing and the filling to the cake on the day before.
- The cake stays good in the fridge to the following day so you can very well do it on the day before.
- You can also make the icing from dark or white chocolate. The dark chocolate hardens a bit harder so take it to room temperature to warm a bit before you roll it flat.

Start with the icing on the day before so it has time to stiffen into a rollable mass.

Chop the milk chocolate to small pieces and melt them in the microwave. Measure to syrup into a kettle and warm it a little - do not let it boil! Pour the melted chocolate into the syrup and add the icing sugar. Put the kettle back on the heat, you do not have to warm it again, just keep the temperature even. Mix it until the filling is nice and even.

Put greaseproof paper onto a small bowl and pour the icing into the bowl. Let it set until the next day. The paper makes it easier to get it out of the bowl.

Make the base. Whisk the eggs and sugar into a foam. It's done when you can "draw" onto the surface of the foam and it does not fade back for a moment.

Mix the dry ingredients together and mix them to the foam through a sieve slowly while mixing.

Pour the base onto a baking tray and bake it in 200C for 6-8 minutes. After baking turn in on a greaseproof paper and take the one you baked it on immediately, othervice it will stick onto the base.

Let the base cool for a while.

Whisk the whipping cream into a foam. Chop the milk chocolate into small pieces and melt them in the microwave. Add them to the whipping cream foam. Take a big bowl (capasity 2,5l) and place cellophane. Cut from the base a piece that will cover the bottom of the bowl. Moist it with milk.

Put 1/3 of the filling into the bowl on top of the base piece. Put rasberries also into the bowl.

Cut and place the next piece from the base, fill with the filling and rasberries. Continue until you have 4 pieces of the base (the last one being the bottom) fitted into the bowl. Pull the cellophane over the last piece of base and let it set for 3-4 hours, if possible, until the next day.

Move the cellophane from the top of the cake, and turn it carefully over. You can carefully press the cake into a different shape at this point, but be careful!

Place powdered sugar on a surface and the icing and roll it flat. If the roller sticks to the icing, place more powdered sugar on top of the icing.

Lift the icing on top of the cake and shape it carefully. Cut the excess icing with a sharp knife. Sprinkle the sugar on top of the cake. It's easier to get the sugar to stick to the sided if you sprinkle with you other hand and press the sugar a little with the other.